Monday, December 12, 2016

Putin Using All Means Against the West – including Islamist Terrorism – Piontkovsky Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 12 – Tragically,
Andrey Piontkovsky says, Washington does not yet understand that Vladimir Putin
is not and will not “struggle against Islamic terrorism together with the West”
but rather is “using all available resources and instruments,” including Islamic terrorism, to “conduct
total hybrid war against the West.”

In a 2000-word analysis on the Radio
Liberty portal today, the Russian commentator argues that this failure to
understand what Putin is about when it comes to dealing with terrorism is found
not only among the leaders of the Obama Administration but with those who will
head the incoming Trump one (svoboda.org/a/28168295.html).

And
Piontkovsky suggests that unless US leaders recognize how Putin is exploiting
the Islamist threat not only to build his increasingly totalitarian regime at
home but also to disorder and undermine the West, the consequences for the
Russia people and the West will far more disastrous than anything either has
seen so far.

A
few days after he was elected US president, Donald Trump told the Wall Street
Journal that “’the Islamic State’ is the most dangerous enemy of the West,”
that Putin is fighting it, and therefore that the US must stop focusing on
minor differences with Moscow and “concentrate on a joint struggle against the
common enemy.”

That
view, which is widespread not only among Trump supporters but also among many
in the Obama camp is the result of a “monstrous” combination of “lies of some
and of naivete and stupidity of others,” the Russian analyst says.

“There
is a mass of evidence about the strategic cooperation of the Kremlin and ‘the
Islamic State,’ about the conscious dispatch by the FSB of Caucasus militants
into its ranks, about the use by Moscow of terrorists as an instrument for
weakening and destroying the West” and also about Putin’s use of terrorism to
build his increasingly vicious state at home.

The
Kremlin and its agents ever more boldly and baldly after each terrorist action
makes the following argument: “lift sanctions and begin to cooperate with us or
[such] actions will continue.” Indeed, “the Kremlin almost openly offers the
West protection from further terrorist acts but of course on its own harsh
conditions: ‘a new Yalta’ and at a minimum Moscow’s full control over the
entire post-Soviet space.”

That
has been obvious for some time, Piontkovsky points out, noting that he wrote about
this already in August (svoboda.org/a/27919173.html).
But now it is important to ask just what tasks it could resolve by “’the
unification’ of its forces with those of Putin’s Russia” by considering the situation
on the ground and its own successes and failures in the past.

It is essential that the US
recognize that “if terrorism is not defeated ideologically in the hearts and
minds of the majority of Muslims, then the umma will immediately push forward
out of its milieu new militants in still greater quantities” under new names
perhaps but with the same goals of defending one branch of Islam against
another.

There has been “only one case” where
“a fundamental victory” over the Islamists occurred: in 2007-2008 when Al-Qaeda
was driven from Iraq as a result of an alliance between the Americans and the
Sunni tribes. What made that so impressive, Piontkovsky suggests, is that only
a few months earlier Al-Qaeda had appeared to be an the height of its
powers.

This case should but has not become
the lesson for the West that it might have been and still should be, he
argues.“Islamic radicalism or
Islamo-fascism can be defeated but only within Islam itself by Muslims who
reject the program of a return to the Middle Ages.”

“Jihadists can find a seedbed and
recruits for their cause only if the Sunni community finds itself in despair
because of attacks by Shiite radicals,” Piontkovsky says. That was true in Iraq
and “the very same logic of events has been repeated in Syria where in the very
same years arose a second wing of ‘the Islamic State.’”

In 2011, the Sunni majority there, together
with supporters of democratic change, appeared to be on the way to displacing the
Asad dictatorship which is based on the Shiites who form only ten percent of the
population and which has remained in power only by the vicious use of force.
Given its base, Piontkovsky suggests, Asad couldn’t hope to stay in power
indefinitely.

But then the Kremlin went to work.
Employing what he calls “the wily thesis” that support for the Sunni majority
and the opposition to Asad would “bring to power the jihadists,” a claim that
is exactly opposite to the truth, the Obama administration and the West more
generally did not stand up to Asad and his Kremlin backers.

And that has produced exactly what
those who believe in the Kremlin’s lies say they fear: the radicalization of
opinion among the Sunnis. Under attack by Asad and Putin and betrayed by the
West, they not surprisingly feel they now have nowhere to turn but to the
radicals who at least promise self-defense.

“For more than a year, Moscow has consistently
and physically destroyed in Syria the Sunni opposition which was oriented to the
West on behalf of the sect of the ‘legitimate’ dictator Asad.” As a result,
today there are only two players in Syria: “the Kremlin agent Asad” and the
jihadists which are being used by Moscow as an instrument to pressure the hated
West.”

Piontkovsky asks: “How can one explain
the surprising servility of the Americans before the Kremlin forces in Syria?”
The US has “shown its ability to adequately respond to Putin’s hybrid
aggression in Ukraine and the Baltics, but in the Middle East, the US has
turned out to be a victim and hostage of its mistakes” and moreover ready to
make “new capitulations.”

Obama has put his faith in some kind
of “Lavrov-Kerry pact,” refuses to acknowledge tha he has made any mistakes in
the Middle East, continues to blame all the problems in that region on former
President George W. Bush, who left office almost eight years ago.

Unfortunately, however, this
tendency is not confined to Obama.Since
November 8, Donald Trump has “not once spoken the words ‘Aleppo’ or ‘Syria.’”
And during his campaign, he frequently praised the actions in Syria “not only
of Putin but of such a battler with terrorism as Asad.”

“Does Trump as before consider that ‘for
victory over ‘the Islamic State’ we need the Russians?” Or, the Russian
commentator asks rhetorically, “has someone explained to him that not only is
this not the case but that such a mantra is “an exceptionally useful instrument
for the Kremlin in its hybrid war with the West?”

As in Iraq, so too in Syria, what the
US needs for victory over the jihadists are Sunis “who rose against the hangman
Asad and whom Obama promised to defend at least from a chemical attack by the ‘legitimate’
authorities. But both the one and the others were betrayed by the American
administration.”

After he takes office next month,
Trump “will be forced to end his silence,” but by then Aleppo and its residents
are likely to have been destroyed by Asad and the Russians.If the incoming president remains true to his
“pre-election conception of a joint struggle together with Putin and Asad
against Islamic terrorism, he will be blessing the continued genocide of the
Sunni population of Syria.”

“If something like that happens,
this will be worse than a crime,” Pioontkovsky says; “this will be a colossal political
mistake.”It will lead to the
metasticization of jihadism, the strengthening of Putin and dictatorships
across the region he backs, and the weakening of the United States and the
West.

Apparently, Washington officials do
not understand what they are going, he continues. “But in Moscow, they
understand exactly what they are doing.” Because the outcome of such a
configuration of forces will work to the benefit of the Kremlin.Indeed, it will do so even if it leads to terrorist
attacks in Russia itself.

As Putin has shown since coming to
office, such attacks also work to his benefit, allowing him to tighten the
screws on the Russian population and setting the stage for unending hostility
to the outside world.

If the US is to be even “relatively
successful in the fight with Islamic terrorism,” Piontkovsky concludes, two
principles must guide its actions: First, the US must focus on protecting the
Sunni majority in Syria and the Sunni minority in Iraq or it will see more
jihadism emerge.

And second, he says, Washington must
end all talk of “’a joint struggle together with Putin against terrorism’” because
such a chimerical idea includes within itself exactly the opposite outcome that
the Kremlin and its agents invariably suggest.